[SOLVED] New laptop, 2 weeks old, FFXIV now sluggish

Jul 21, 2020
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I have a new laptop that worked great for 2 weeks; however, now it has started locking up and becoming unresponsive while playing FFXIV

Cyberpower PC with an AMD Ryzen 4700H processor, NVIDIA RTX2060 GPU, 1TB WD Black SSD, 2 x 16GB RAM. I've installed the latest video drivers, I ran FurMark test and it passed, I ran a memory test and it passed, and did a ChkDsk /F and I'm still getting lock ups.

The most curious part is how intermittent it is. I can play for 6 hours with no issues and then it will lock up. I restart and it locks up again. I restart and it locks up within an hour. Then, it'll be fine for another 6 hours. The next day, it locks up after an hour, restart, locks up again. Next day, fine all day.

When it locks up, the screen goes black, the laptop becomes completely unresponsive, and only a forced shutdown will recover it. I looked in Event Viewer and the only errors I get are the Kernel-Power errors that result from the forced shutdown itself and nothing pertaining to lock up. I'm inclined, at this point, to think it's the GPU driver, but there are so many versions, I could spend weeks trying to find the right now. The only other thing I can think is that the HD is intermittently failing, but that seems like a stretch.

Any help would be appreciated as I'm fairly new to PC gaming (switching over from consoles).
 
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Solution
Does it do this with any other use cases or only with FF XIV? The answer may narrow it down to something with the game or a wider Windows or driver or even possible hardware issue.

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Which version of Windows 10 are you working with? Perhaps see if you have any BIOS updates pending for the laptop...? You could also try uninstalling your GPU drivers using DDU and manually downloading and reinstalling said GPU drivers with the latest off of AMD's support site.

If the laptop is equipped with only an HDD, then you can use CrystalDiskMark to scope out the HDD. If the laptop has an SSD, can you go through Device Manager and see what the make and model of the SSD is?
 
Jul 21, 2020
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  • I'm on Windows version 1909
  • Haven't checked for BIOS updates - are there any other systems on the machine I should check for new updates to?
  • I haven't tried uninstalling and re-installing yet, I will try that. You mentioned my AMD GPU though - I didn't update that one, just the NVIDIA. That said, don't games typically utilize both GPUs? During sessions, the NVIDIA GPU is normally utilized at about 70% and the integrated AMD GPU is utilized at about 20%, which is why my focus has been on the NVIDIA drivers - do you think I've been focusing on the wrong device?
  • Only one HD - a 1TB WD Black SSD - is there a software program out there that can test its health?
 
If your problem happens with just one game, look first for a game patch.

What might have changed in the past 2 weeks?

Another thing, gaming laptops are notorious for weak cpu coolers.
Verify that your cooling airways are free of dust and that the cooling fan is spinning.
Heat can cause the cpu to throttle.
 
When things are working well, I take a system restore user checkpoint so I can back off a problematic update.
You can pause updates for a week, and I would do that.

On heat, run HWmonitor which will give you the current, high and low temperatures.

Are you running plugged in?
If not, the default is to lower performance to save battery life.
 
Jul 21, 2020
5
0
10
If your problem happens with just one game, look first for a game patch.

What might have changed in the past 2 weeks?

Another thing, gaming laptops are notorious for weak cpu coolers.
Verify that your cooling airways are free of dust and that the cooling fan is spinning.
Heat can cause the cpu to throttle.
I only have the one game on the laptop so I can't verify if it happens with other machines. That said, to the best of my knowledge, only a few Windows Updates have happened in the past few weeks. I know those can cause problems, but Windows is a pill about disabling them, so there doesn't appear to be much I can do to stop them, save continually pausing them.

On the CPU, although I accept it may be getting hot, I have yet to see CPU utilization go higher than 35% and sometimes it goes hours with no issues and sometimes it locks up within the first hour - with all that in mind, do you still think it could be CPU heat? Airways are clear and I even had a 'cooling pad' running during some of the lockups - what else can I do?
 
Jul 21, 2020
5
0
10
When things are working well, I take a system restore user checkpoint so I can back off a problematic update.
You can pause updates for a week, and I would do that.

On heat, run HWmonitor which will give you the current, high and low temperatures.

Are you running plugged in?
If not, the default is to lower performance to save battery life.
I will try HWmonitor.

Yes, I'm playing while plugged in. I've tried making adjustments, but anytime I unplug my power adapter, my FPS drops to 20 and the internal fans stop running. Can't seem to stop that from happening.
 
Jul 21, 2020
5
0
10
When things are working well, I take a system restore user checkpoint so I can back off a problematic update.
You can pause updates for a week, and I would do that.

On heat, run HWmonitor which will give you the current, high and low temperatures.

Are you running plugged in?
If not, the default is to lower performance to save battery life.
I downloaded and am running HWmonitor but it doesn't monitor the temperature of my AMD Ryzen processor. I get temps on the SSD and the NVIDIA GPU (not the AMD GPU).